The unimportant news thread

[Todd]

Per NBC News (corroborated by the Gray Lady), Mr Hunka was part of the 14th Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS.  All the rationalization on GMG can't change that fact, and it cannot change the fact that the Trudeau government scored an own goal. 

It turns out that Mr Hunka may regret attending such a public function: Yaroslav Hunka Extradition Demanded by Poland Over Alleged Nazi Past

This is clown car stuff.

[AnotherSpin]

Per NBC News (corroborated by the Gray Lady), Mr Hunka was part of the 14th Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS.  All the rationalization on GMG can't change that fact, and it cannot change the fact that the Trudeau government scored an own goal. 

It turns out that Mr Hunka may regret attending such a public function: Yaroslav Hunka Extradition Demanded by Poland Over Alleged Nazi Past

This is clown car stuff.

Very funny. Not Poland, but a certain Polish politician by the name Przemyslaw Czarnek in his twitter. A very interesting person. From Wikipedia article about: "Czarnek is notable for his opposition to LGBT rights, his controversial comments on women's rights, and supporting corporal punishment for children. He filed a criminal case in opposition to the recognition of Ukrainian victims of the Home Army in the 1944 Sahryń massacre." (The Sahryń massacre was a massacre of Ukrainian combatants and civilians by members of the Polish Home Army on 10 March 1944). Also "In 2019, Czarnek opposed a memorial by Polish artist Dorota Nieznalska that commemorated Jews who were killed by Poles during and after the Holocaust. He called the memorial a "scandal" and "anti-Polish" and said that it should be removed."

Todd, why don't you check what you post? Just curious.

[Todd]

Todd, why don't you check what you post? Just curious.

I do.

[Todd]

FTC and 17 states sue Amazon on antitrust charges

I know that this thread is supposed to be devoted to unimportant news, and that this is one of the most important stories in the history of the world, but I cannot stop myself from posting the story.  This has the potential to very slightly inconvenience me. 

[AnotherSpin]

I do.

I see

[DavidW]

FTC and 17 states sue Amazon on antitrust charges

I know that this thread is supposed to be devoted to unimportant news, and that this is one of the most important stories in the history of the world, but I cannot stop myself from posting the story.  This has the potential to very slightly inconvenience me. 

I've known that Amazon has been squeezing sellers more and more over the years.  I did not know that they have a monopoly on ecommerce.  Interesting...

[Todd]

I've known that Amazon has been squeezing sellers more and more over the years.  I did not know that they have a monopoly on ecommerce.  Interesting...

The FTC complaint appears rooted in consumer harm, so it's meat and potatoes type antitrust action rather than something broader and novel that one might have expected from Ms Kahn.  (I don't know if I have the stamina to read the 172 page complaint.) 

If prices on the consumer products I purchase from Amazon decrease I will be happy with the outcome.  If prices go up, I will be unhappy with the outcome.  A similar outlook attaches to delivery times.

[BWV 1080]

As noted above, Galicia was not found guilty of any war crimes by any military tribunal or commission, neither at the Nuremberg trials nor at any other. The so-called assistance in the murder of Jews on their part is not confirmed; it is a Kremlin fabrication.

SS Galicia did this:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Huta_Pieniacka_massacre

And my point about the murder of Jews referred to Ukrainian auxiliary police units, not Galicia.  The auxillary police units, as you not doubt are aware, helped facilitate  the massacre at Babi Yar and were a major contributor to the Holocaust in Ukraine and Belorussia.  Many of the members of SS Galicia came from these units

[Spotted Horses]

I've known that Amazon has been squeezing sellers more and more over the years.  I did not know that they have a monopoly on ecommerce.  Interesting...

Having a monopoly (having high market share) is not a violation. There are certain behaviors that are problematic. For instance, driving competitors out of business by reducing prices below cost, sustained by profits in other markets, then raising prices is a red flag. A classic example is canneries in California which drove independent farmers out of business by conspiring to pay ruinously low prices for fruit (mostly from farms they controlled) and profiting from high prices of canned goods. I can imagine the Prime thing could be an issue, since you have to be a member to access their video streaming, which then subsidizes their free-shipping universe.

Not my area of expertise, but it is a technical challenge to demonstrate that they have abused their position to harm customers and/or stifle competition. It's reminiscent of the Microsoft/Internet Explorer, and using dominance of Microsoft Windows to suppress independent application developers. (i.e. Microsoft Word used undocumented operating system features that allowed it to do things that other word processor couldn't do using the publicly available application program interface).

[Todd]

It's reminiscent of the Microsoft/Internet Explorer, and using dominance of Microsoft Windows to suppress independent application developers.

I'm not sure that's a good analog, at least based on the summary in the business press.  For instance, the FTC is paying special attention to specific policies that explicitly affect pricing for consumer products (eg, anti-discounting policies).  The case against Microsoft was more novel than this case since even at the time consumers had access to free alternatives to IE, some of which were already popular.  While one can certainly argue that consumers have alternatives to Amazon, because they do, the FTC asserts that Amazon's practices result in higher prices across a broad spectrum of products "across the internet", so at least some arguments will rely on demonstrating direct economic harm to consumers.

The FTC has not prescribed any specific remedies at this time.  What that ends up presaging is the big question. 

[Spotted Horses]

The case against Microsoft was more novel than this case since even at the time consumers had access to free alternatives to IE, some of which were already popular. 

I found it ironic that Microsoft was sanctioned for a behavior which I found innocuous (I have never used IE on Windows) I seem to recall that they were going to merge IE with the finder, so you would use IE to explore both your hard disk and the internet. Maybe the anti-trust case prevented that.

What bugged me most about Microsoft was their using incompatibility as a weapon, making it difficult to use industry standard formats (i.e., sharing documents as Microsoft Word *.doc files rather than platform independent *.pdf files, which Microsoft made it extremely inconvenient to work with.)

[AnotherSpin]

SS Galicia did this:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Huta_Pieniacka_massacre

And my point about the murder of Jews referred to Ukrainian auxiliary police units, not Galicia.  The auxillary police units, as you not doubt are aware, helped facilitate  the massacre at Babi Yar and were a major contributor to the Holocaust in Ukraine and Belorussia.  Many of the members of SS Galicia came from these units

I am aware that Galicia was never found guilty by any trial, as it was mentioned already. I do not think I can add anything else to this topic. Jews were killed during the war, it is a fact. And many others too, including millions of Ukrainians, both military and civilians. Check the figures if you are interested.

[BWV 1080]

I am aware that Galicia was never found guilty by any trial, as it was mentioned already. I do not think I can add anything else to this topic. Jews were killed during the war, it is a fact. And many others too, including millions of Ukrainians, both military and civilians. Check the figures if you are interested.

What units were ever tried? Individuals were tried, not units - and as the entire German army was complicit in the Holocaust, it stands to reason that SS Galicia was no exception, particularly as they recruited out of the Ukrainian auxiliaries

[ritter]

Let's please try to stick to unimportant stuff in this thread...

[AnotherSpin]

What units were ever tried? Individuals were tried, not units - and as the entire German army was complicit in the Holocaust, it stands to reason that SS Galicia was no exception, particularly as they recruited out of the Ukrainian auxiliaries

See my first reply to Todd on this "sensation", #5794.

[BWV 1080]

See my first reply to Todd on this "sensation", #5794.

You understand no units were tried at Nuremberg, just individuals?

The Canadian government (rightly IMO) ruled that membership in Galicia did not automatically make one a war criminal, like it would for someone who was part of an Einsatzgruppen or one of the Ukrainian police auxiliaries

[AnotherSpin]

You understand no units were tried at Nuremberg, just individuals?

The Canadian government (rightly IMO) ruled that membership in Galicia did not automatically make one a war criminal, like it would for someone who was part of an Einsatzgruppen or one of the Ukrainian police auxiliaries

Quote from Wikipedia: "Although the Waffen-SS as a whole was declared to be a criminal organization at the Nuremberg Trials, the Galician Division has not specifically been found guilty of any war crimes by any war tribunal or commission. Numerous accusations of impropriety were leveled at the division, and particular members, from a variety of sources."

There is no doubt that this whole media debacle with a 98-year-old Ukrainian veteran in connection with Zelensky's visit to Canada was ordered and paid from the Kremlin in one more attempt in concert with myriad others to damage Western support for Ukraine. I don't see any other content and meaning here. Let me conclude here.

[DavidW]

Superconductor research retracted from Nature!!

https://www.wsj.com/science/room-temperature-superconductor-retract-journal-nature-e554536a

If you had not been following this story, there had been accusations of fabricating data that extended back well before the current claim.

[Todd]

If you had not been following this story, there had been accusations of fabricating data that extended back well before the current claim.

Pfft, next thing you're gonna tell me is that articles purporting to show breakthroughs in cold fusion are bogus.

[Todd]

From, um, Variety (?): Former Prime Minister of Finland Sanna Marin Signs With Range Media Partners